


Rhapsody in Blue

by threeturn



Category: X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Bodyswap, Character Study, F/F, Power Swap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-07
Updated: 2012-11-07
Packaged: 2017-11-18 04:24:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/556868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/threeturn/pseuds/threeturn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Raven and Charles swap bodies and powers when Hank's experiment goes wrong. Set during training week in Westchester, after Shaw invades the CIA base.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rhapsody in Blue

Hank rolled up Raven's shirt sleeve to bare her upper arm. He was wearing his serious scientist face, but Raven knew that underneath it lay a certain amount of glee. He'd been so thrilled to discover Charles's fully equipped lab when they'd arrived at the mansion a week ago. He could continue with their project, he'd told Raven, almost disbelieving his luck. They wouldn't miss a day.

Now, ready to move to the next stage, he seemed to be trying to mask his eagerness. "Are you sure you want to do this? You'll be depowered."

"Only temporarily, you said." She braced herself as he drew the tourniquet tight.

"Yeah, so I can figure out how to isolate the genetic markers for ability from outward appearance. But until it wears off, you won't be able to shapeshift. You'll be locked into the body you have at the time of injection."

Raven tucked blond hair behind her ears. "Could you hold on then?" she joked weakly. "I want to turn into Elizabeth Taylor first."

"I like you as you are," said Hank. He looked at her seriously and Raven could tell he meant it to be a declaration. She'd heard those words before, from Angel's mouth. When Angel said it, though, Raven had been in her own blue skin.

Then again, Hank wasn't currently spitting poison balls on behalf of a psychopathic killer, so maybe he should win this round anyway.

"Do it," she told him, and felt the needle go in. Abruptly, there was a clatter at the door, and then Charles in her mind, a broken promise too familiar to be surprising.

"Raven. Hank. What is it you're doing?" His voice was merely brisk, but Raven winced at the panic he was projecting into her head.

"Ow!" Raven closed her eyes briefly as Hank withdrew the needle. "Charles, I know you don't believe me, but I can actually hear you when you speak out loud. I don't need a double track."

Charles was already at her side, grabbing the syringe from Hank and holding it up to the light. "You may fancy yourself a benign Dr. Jekyll, Hank, but you're not to experiment on Raven, I draw the line." He was still fussing at the edges of Raven's mind with darts of anxiety and concern.

Raven turned to face him, puzzled, and shifted: to herself, blue. Then, testing, to Moira. Back to herself, pretty. She looked at Hank. "I can still change."

Hank bit his lip. "It'll be a little while before it takes effect. Maybe a couple of hours? When it does, I'll take another blood sample and we'll be a step closer to developing our cure."

Charles's mind was still jangling. "What was in this syringe, Hank? We still have to face Shaw, we don't know what's coming. If she gets hurt—"

Raven put her hand to her head, feeling dizzy, then to Charles's cheek. "I'm fine, Charles. Hank will explain. I'm just gonna go lie down, okay? I have a headache."

Charles was holding his fingers to his forehead, puzzled. "Now that you mention it—me, too."

 

*

 

Raven opened her eyes and groaned.

She'd woken up male before, of course. It all depended on what she'd been dreaming about. Her eighth grade history teacher, about to give her a test without warning. Charles's creepy stepfather. The bartender at their local. She'd never woken up as Charles before, though.

She closed her eyes again to shift. Charles, of all people. She saw enough of him daily. She relaxed back into her own body, waited for its comfort, the way only intricately ridged blue skin could breath the air just so.

Except that it didn't come. The house was noisier than usual somehow, despite the thick carpets that absorbed household sounds. It was difficult to concentrate, and maybe that's why she was still _Charles_ , all knobbly knees and hairy thighs. She could feel it.

Or maybe she'd napped too long. Judging by the light streaming in the windows, it was already midday. Raven flexed and thought of being Moira—brave, lovely, confident—and was still Charles. She tried to find her blond self, the body she'd had when Hank's needle went in—and was still Charles.

Raven visualized Hank's nervous, clever face. _Hank_ , she thought. _I am going to glue all of your toes together and then lock you in a room with Sean while he's practicing his upper registers._

She had already flopped back down and pulled the covers up when she heard him.

_My_ toes? _Is that you, Charles?_

The voice was Hank's.

Raven tried to decide Hank was outside her door or hiding under her bed or perhaps inside the wardrobe; he'd always been a little strange. Anything to avoid knowing, as she somehow did know, with a certainty beyond question, that Hank was in the lab in the east wing, half the mansion away.

The humming was louder. Raven put her head—Charles's stupid head—under a pillow. _Fucking Charles_ , she thought again, although really it must be Hank's fault, right?

She tried to replay in her head what had happened in the lab. She remembered Charles's panicky face, heard his panicky voice. _What in heaven's name? Oh god. Oh god._

But he hadn't been saying _that_ in the lab, had he? Raven called, "Charles?"

_I can't hear, I can't hear, I can't hear. Oh god._

Raven sat bolt upright. It wasn't a memory.

_Oh god. I'm alone._

"Charles," said Raven again, and this time she ran to him.

 

*

 

"Well, this is absurd," said Charles sometime later, after Raven had discovered him rocking back and forth in the corner of his room looking rather small and entirely blue. "In fact, impossible. Hank's attempt at isolated gene suppression could not possibly bring about bodily transference unless—"

"Charles. Shut up for a minute." Crouched on the floor in front of him, she looked into his yellow eyes with her newly acquired blue ones, trying to sort out the mess of his mind from the flow of his talk. Layers of anxiety, layers of scientific curiosity, and all the time there was the background hum of the rest of the mansion, the noise she now understood to mean too many complicated minds. How did Charles _cope_ with this all the time?

There was a blue hand on her arm, gripping her hard. She let go of his mind in a rush, tried to keep it out. "I'm sorry. Do you want me to stay out of your mind? Only I can't quite—I don't know how yet. To pick and choose."

There was a choking sound from Charles that Raven realized was supposed to be a chuckle. "You don't just have my body, then."

"Well, obviously. Couldn't you tell?"

"No." He looked at her evenly. "I told you, I can't tell anything. Can you shapeshift?"

Raven took a deep breath and tried without much hope to sense the elastic boundaries of her skin. "No. It's like I'm numb. It's—I can't feel myself. I mean, I was expecting not to be able to change for a little while. I just didn't expect to spend the time in your body in particular."

Charles smiled sweetly. "This must be a nice surprise, then."

Raven stuck out her tongue at him. "Or to have your powers to go along with it. Not that it's so easy, being stuck one way. It's like not being able to use my own body. Almost like not _having_ a body at all."

"You do have a body," said Charles, sounding irritated. " _My_ body. You just can't change it for the moment. Which is normal, Raven. And now you can _hear_."

"I could hear _before_ , dumbass. Or am I supposed to be grateful for this noise that won't go away?"

"It's not noise! It's…like music, it's—well. And now there's silence everywhere. I mean, is this what not being a telepath feels? Like being lonely forever?"

Raven rolled her eyes and put two fingers to her temple with an exaggerated flourish. She thought slowly and deliberately, trying to orient her consciousness toward him. _Is this what being Charles Xavier feels like? Like being a pompous drama queen forever?"_

Charles frowned at her hand. "That's not the side I use. I use my other hand."

"Oh, who cares, Charles?" But Raven switched hands anyway. The texture of Charles's worry did not change appreciably. She put both hands down, but his mind kept whining on about how he didn't want to be separate, or female, or electric blue.

_What the fuck, Charles_. His yellow eyes snapped to hers. _Just change, then, idiot. If I can all of a sudden read minds, what do you think_ you _can do?_

Charles gasped then, with relief and fear both. Raven nodded encouragingly. "Just try."

He tensed, threw back his shoulders, shimmered in a vertical wave. And there he was, Charles Xavier again, except with scaled blue skin and brassy red hair. "It doesn't work right!"

"You have to practice, silly," said Raven. "You have to concentrate. Speaking of which, your little fingers on the forehead trick? Does nothing. All this time, you were just being pretentious."

"It works for _me_ ," said Charles.

" _Worked_ ," said Raven, and then felt sorry when she saw his blue Charles-face fall. "Try again. Think of yourself as you usually are. Try to hear your own voice."

He swallowed hard, body rippling with tension, and then Raven saw her own face, her own silhouette, emerge again in front of her. Charles's frustration was like a scream in Raven's mind. He clenched a fist and punched the wall, then stared wonderingly at the dent. "I'd forgotten. You're really quite strong."

"Welcome to my body, Charles," said Raven, and then, quickly, "I didn't mean that the way it sounded." She grabbed the hand he'd used to punch, took his index and middle fingers, and raised them to his temple. "Now concentrate."

Charles pressed his fingers where she'd put them and closed his eyes. Raven watched as blue washed out of him and the familiar outlines of Charles's body appeared. His face was last to waver into focus. He opened his eyes, breathing hard, and smiled. "Two of us."

Raven heard a cough from the open door. Without turning around, she felt the almost unbearable weight of Erik's mind, and then dropped it, quickly.

"Now _this_ ," said Erik. "This is what I call a lucky day."

Charles dropped his hand from his head and stared up at Erik. The lines of his body stuttered somehow, and then he looked like Raven again, scaled and gleaming.

Erik's face communicated pleased surprise. "Also acceptable."

Raven and Charles glared at him together.

 

*

 

They were all in the lab, Charles and Raven and Hank sitting at a counter cluttered with vials, Erik lounging against the back wall near a portrait of Charles's great-great-grandfather. Raven had borrowed Charles's sneakers and gone to her room to put on that grey sweatsuit he'd been so delighted to present her with a week ago. It was awful, but it didn't seem as stupid as wrapping one of her miniskirts around Charles's waist.

"I hate clothes," she said suddenly, into the silence. Erik raised his eyebrows and smiled.

"Thank you for your input, Raven," said Charles. "Hank?"

"Well, I can't say I've seen anything like this before," said Hank. He clicked his pen thoughtfully.

"That's because it's impossible," said Charles resentfully.

"That's what he keeps saying instead of 'sorry,'" Raven explained to Hank.

"Sorry? What on earth have I to apologize for?" Charles was agitatedly rubbing a lock of red hair between thumb and forefinger.

"Nothing," said Erik. "You interrupted an experiment that was foolish and wrong. Not that the results aren't charming."

"See, Charles," said Raven. "Even your boyfriend admits it's your fault. Isn't it, Hank?"

Hank frowned. "I confess, I can't quite see how. Unless Charles deliberately contaminated the solution with his own DNA. "

Charles looked horrified. "I wouldn't do that. Good god, Hank, I may not approve of your little experiment, but I'm a man of science myself." Abruptly he shifted, now a small man with outlandish white hair who looked distinctly familiar.

"My little—" Hank broke off. " _Must_ you do that?"

"Charles." Raven squeezed his hand. "We know you're not Albert Einstein. Please stop."

He shook himself, and blue skin rippled back. "It was inadvertent. My apologies."

_Well, now I know what my embarrassed face looks like_ , thought Raven. Out loud, she said, "I don't think you contaminated anything on purpose, Charles. But think about it. We switched powers, right? Hank said I'd be stuck with the body I had when he gave me the shot. You were in my mind right when the injection was going in."

Hank's eyes widened. "Fascinating, yeah, of course!" He scribbled a note on his pad.

"Of course _what_?" Charles's yellow eyes were narrowed.

_I'm actually kind of dangerous-looking_ , realized Raven, pleased. "Don't you see, Charles? You were so freaking loud right at that moment. Instead of getting stuck as myself, I got stuck as you."

"Once recombination was complete, of course," Hank mused. "I can't wait to see the blood samples." He opened a drawer and started fussing with his vacutainers.

Charles was beginning to nod. "So your power was suppressed, and because my own is so dominant I was able to _inject myself_ into your mind, giving you an incredible gift."

_And now I know what I look like when I'm being unbelievably smug_ , thought Raven. "Yes, Charles, it's all because of how incredibly masculine you are, isn't that nice?"

Hank drew a tourniquet around Charles's arm and began probing for a vein. "Actually, Charles, given that somehow Raven's absorption of your powers simultaneously transferred her own to you, I do believe Raven gave you a gift as well."

Charles winced as the needle went in. "I don't want her gift!"

Raven glared at him. "I don't want your gift either, jerkface. Now would you please stop freaking out and _calm your stupid mind_?"

Hank held up a hand between them. "Charles, no violence till I've got the sample. And even then you shouldn't hit Raven. Even if right now she's you." He withdrew the needle.

" _I'm_ me," said Charles, and suddenly was, blue-eyed and beaming with pride, before turning abruptly into John F. Kennedy and then a small blue fish.

Erik was kneeling on the floor in an instant, cupping his hands protectively around the gasping fish. "Stop fighting it so hard, Charles," Raven said, and thought comforting water thoughts to the fish until quite suddenly it leapt out of Erik's hands and was a blue girl huddled on the floor. Erik patted her—him—awkwardly on the shoulder.

Clumsily, Charles scrambled to his knees. "Look, Raven. If it was me who—look, I'm sorry."

Raven squeezed his hand, pulled him up. "Why were you in my mind in the first place?"

Charles bit a blue lip. "You wouldn't believe it if I said I had to find out what you wanted for your birthday, would you?"

"Not so much." Raven rolled her eyes and went to Hank for her blood draw.

"It's just, I could tell you were—I wanted to know if—" He looked around at the others. "Can we talk about this later, Raven?"

Raven put her fingers to her head with an exaggerated flourish. "Why are you thinking so hard about how many milligrams Hank needs?"

"Because you're snooping in my mind?"

"Maybe you should be thinking about pots and kettles instead," she hissed.

Erik looked back and forth between Raven and Charles. "Did you two fight a lot as kids?"

Raven shrugged. "Only when Charles was horribly condescending."

"As if you haven't been condescending to me since this happened," Charles grumbled.

"Fair enough," said Raven. "It must be this body I'm in."

"Yes, about that." Hank was frowning thoughtfully. "Was it the power transference that triggered the physical transference, or the other way around? Either way, this complicates development of the final serum. I'm not entirely pleased."

"Oh really? Because I _love_ it," Charles growled, and then threw up his hands when he saw Raven's look. "What? I just want to be me again, is that so offensive? We're not all so used to being in someone else's body most of the time. Stop smirking, Erik." He rippled, became Charles again.

"Right, and having to hide all the time is definitely my favorite thing," Raven shot back. There was a sharpening of attention from Erik, then, a burst of approval. Their eyes met before she turned back to Hank. "What's the problem, Hank? It's only temporary, right?"

"Definitely," said Hank. "Definitely, it should definitely probably be almost certainly temporary."

"I see," said Charles.

"Look, I need a little time to run tests. Can you guys come back later?" Hank's voice was carefully calm now.

"That's it? That's all you have to say?" Charles's voice rose incredulously. He was wavering back into blue.

"Charles," said Erik. "Come with me. We'll work on developing your power and control."

Raven snorted. Erik turned to her. "Out of my mind. Right now."

"Of course," said Raven quickly. "Sorry, Erik."

"You needn't worry yourself, my friend," said Charles to Erik. He was radiating confidence again. "I may not be entirely myself today, but I still know what you're thinking."

_Ew_ , Raven thought into Hank's mind, and could still feel his amusement as she closed the door to the lab behind her.

 

*

 

An hour later, she was wandering around the grounds, far enough away from the others not to hear them, but still half-heartedly hoping to run into Alex or Sean so she could try freezing their minds. Not because it would be hilarious or because she wanted to try everything Charles could do just in case she snapped back to her usual self in the next hour or so and missed her chance. Just because she had a responsibility to learn to manage her powers in case she had to use them to avert nuclear war.

Sean wouldn't mind having his mind frozen, she thought. Alex might. He'd been pretty grim company since they'd left the CIA base. She felt a little guilty around him now. Which was ridiculous because she hadn't had anything to do with that particular disaster. She just—she just missed Angel sometimes, which was stupid. She couldn't keep feeling that way about a person who chose the man who killed Darwin. She'd been wrong about her, that was all.

Of course she'd wanted to be Angel's friend at first, nothing wrong with that. Before she'd only had the companionship of Charles, his familiar and distracted kindness, his maddening assumption that _he_ was taking care of _her_ , his insistence that he be her guide. She'd always figured that with a girl it would be different: a girl could look at her and see a friend instead of a responsibility. They could have private jokes, not explain them to Charles. When she imagined herself with a girl like that there was always a point at which her daydream had to stop, because she'd realize who she was as she walked arm in arm with her friend: herself, her body, whorled in blue. And where were they walking, then? Not anywhere that they could be seen.

Charles and Erik had told her that one of the mutants they would try to bring back was a girl— _and why just one_ , she wanted to ask. _Why not more?_ She thought of the things she would want to say to a girl-mutant, things like: _I'm not alone. You're not alone._ She wanted there to be a girl to whom she could say such things.

She didn't expect Angel.

It would have been impossible to have imagined Angel. Watching Charles open the door for her, seeing Angel step out and give him that look that said _I'm playing this game but don't think I believe in it_ , she felt a quick wash of blue, barely visible, before she smoothed herself out again, brought back golden skin.

"Raven," she said, when Angel asked her name, not mentioning the other name, the one she'd thought of ages ago, tucked away in a corner of her mind for safekeeping.

"Do you have them too, then?"

"What?" Raven hadn't understood. She didn't know Angel's mutation yet.

"Wings. You have a bird's name. I thought maybe—do you know how to fly?" And Angel's fingers had been at her shoulders, searching there.

Raven closed her eyes, willed away blue. "No, I—it's just a name. What I do is—" To show her, she took Charles's body. Angel took a quick step back, her smile gone.

In an instant, Raven was back again, blond, but Angel didn't look any friendlier. "You're not—are you him? Or is he you?"

"God, no," said Raven, laughing. "I'm anyone." She became Erik, quickly, and then the CIA functionary he and Charles were still talking to.

"Thank fuck for that," said Angel.

"Why? Don't you like him?"

"He's fine. He's an idiot."

Raven didn't like the certainty in Angel's voice. "He's very brilliant."

"Well, sure," said Angel. "Also, an idiot."

"But—" Raven changed her mind. "You know he's like my brother, right?"

Angel shrugged. "You know you're not actually anyone, right?"

Raven thought she might cry. Angel must have seen her face fall. "No, I meant—you said you were anyone. What I mean is, you're not just _any_ one. You're you."

Raven looked from Angel's dark eyes down to where Angel had taken her hand. "You haven't seen me yet," she whispered, like a confession.

Angel looked puzzled a moment, then smiled. "That's good," she said. "You have to be careful. After all, you don't know me."

"But I will," said Raven, holding on to Angel's hand. Somehow it was a promise. "I will."

And now Angel was gone.

No one talked about her, that was the strange thing. No one talked about Darwin, either. Especially not Alex. As if they'd never been.

Drops of rain began to fall on the graveled path, and Raven turned back toward the house. As she grew nearer, the jumble of multiple minds grew more insistent. Really, why did people have to _feel_ so many things? She tried ignoring it all, and the noise grew worse. She tried listening to it all, and understood nothing, and felt sick. Then she tripped on the doorstep and almost fell into the rhododendrons, but just managed not to, and when she got to her feet again she realized the mind-hum was still there but it didn't hurt.

If you didn't open up completely. If at the same time you didn't resist. If you were busy trying not to fall into rhododendrons, it all of a sudden wasn't bad at all.

Raven was on the stairs that led to her room and wasn't entirely sure how she'd gotten there. She grinned, pleased. She'd have to tell Charles how well she was managing, how the mumble of undistinguished thoughts swirling around her could even be kind of pleasant. She reached out into the hum, finding Charles in Erik's room, hearing—

_You like this, don't you? You like me not being able to read your mind._

Raven started to aim a thought back, and then realized Charles wasn't talking to her. She stayed in his mind, quietly, reached out for Erik's as well.

_I like you lots of ways. Right now I like you like this._

_This body? Really?_

_Stay like that for me now, Charles. Stay just. like. that._

Raven hastily pushed their minds away. _When I get my body back_ , thought Raven, _the first thing I'll do is take a long shower_. She wanted to feel bad about eavesdropping, but it was odd how quickly other people's thoughts began to feel—not private, not solely _theirs_. It was like everyone was leaving their diary out on their desk for her, open to the most revealing page. Was it her fault if she just happened to—

_Yes_ , she told herself. _And you can't._ She was back in her room now, the room that had been hers ever since that night Charles had taken her in. _From now on I won't just look without asking_ , she thought. She caught sight of herself in the mirror, saw Charles Xavier glancing back, sighed, and flopped back on the bed. Charles probably used to make the same kind of resolution, and look how well he managed to follow it. She needed to distract herself.

Five minutes later, she'd discovered that in Charles's body she could no longer touch her left toe to her right ear, that Charles really needed to work on his upper body strength, and that being trapped in a single form was ridiculously unnatural. She started to reach out mentally toward Hank, see if he had made any progress, and then stopped, abashed. _If he knew something, he'd be telling us._ Not reading a mind should be easy—like deciding to focus on the horizon instead of the thing in front of you.

Mountains in the distance, she thought. Sunlight on water. She would wait for Hank and meanwhile she would think of the ocean.

Not of Angel, either. Waves, far away. Not—

It was an image that came to her, not a voice. There were no words, just a picture, a flash. Herself, blue. Someone must have her in mind. It wasn't Raven's own thought, because it felt so distant. It couldn't be Raven's own thought, because in the image—she was blue, but she was also beautiful.

She brushed it away. Waves.

 

*

 

Dinner was a tense and somewhat surreal affair. Charles had initially appeared in his own body but lapsed into Raven's with increasing frequency with each successive glass of wine. Erik talked about weapons technology with Moira and once squeezed Raven's thigh under the table before remembering she wasn't actually Charles.

Alex and Sean weren't used to seeing blue Raven, especially a blue Raven who was really Charles Xavier, and kept staring at him and whispering. Meanwhile, they treated Raven with unusual respect, which was not particularly gratifying given that it was an obvious byproduct of looking like Charles.

Hank showed up briefly to shovel food onto a plate, be insulted by Alex, and announce that he'd be eating in the lab and working late.

Sean asked, "If Charles can't read minds anymore, do I still have to try flying again tomorrow?"

"Yes," said Raven, and Sean nodded, accepted her authority.

She shot a look at Charles. He raised his glass to her, unsmiling, a smudge of wine at the edge of one blue lip.

 

*

 

The next morning, the disappointment of once again waking up in confinement, still Charles Xavier, was tempered by the almost-pleasure of consciousness all around her, the hum an immersive element, something she'd begun to breathe, like air.

Later, when Hank told her she should find Charles, meet him in the library to discuss reversing the effects, she was even a bit sorry he'd figured it out so soon. But only a little bit.

Morning sun illuminated infinite dust motes as Hank peered at Raven and Charles through his glasses. They were sitting around the heavy oak table. It was there, years ago, that Raven and Charles had done their homework and Raven had crumpled up the concerned letters from the school nurse about how small she was for her age. Periodically Charles would insist she age herself a little and she would try her best and then get bored and line her small face with the craggy wrinkles of someone impossibly aged, and Charles would crack up, and they would get very little homework done that day.

Raven looked up to grin at Charles, wanting to show him the memory, maybe flash a picture of herself as an aged crone into his mind. Charles was in his own world, though, looking distracted and—she'd found him in Erik's room, of course—a little bit blissed out. Since he'd put his tweeds on over her blue body, he was also looking completely ridiculous.

Hank cleared his throat. "Now, the first option we have in front of us is simply to wait. Admittedly I don't understand all the ramifications of the compound's transference effect, but I still expect it to be temporary, as originally designed."

"Right," said Charles. "How temporary was it originally designed to be?"

"Half a day, maybe?" said Hank. "And now it's a day later, so we're a little behind schedule. I'm not entirely certain what impact resituating rather than suppressing the relevant mutations has had."

Charles looked a little grimmer. "You do understand we're in the middle of tracking down a mass murderer, laying the groundwork for future cooperation between mutant and human, and stopping World War III?"

"When you put it like that…" said Hank.

"Don't worry about it," said Charles. "It's much more important to deal with your self-consciousness about your feet."

Hank looked stricken. "Or develop your 'power and control' with Erik, right, Charles?" said Raven. "What's the other option, Hank?"

"Oh. Well, yes." Hank shuffled some papers and coughed. "Now, obviously this sort of transpositional event is undocumented in the scientific literature. On the other hand, there are isolated—let's call them case histories—in less reliable records."

Raven looked in Hank's mind to see if his thoughts were clearer than the gibberish he was spouting. He seemed to be thinking about stories, fairy tales really, and he was wondering about whether he'd ever see her beautiful soft smile and honey-colored hair again, or her—

"Concentrate, Hank, no wonder you're not making any sense," snapped Raven, and then remembered her resolution not to snoop when Hank dropped his pen, embarrassed. "Oops, sorry."

"Stay out of his mind, Raven, it's a courtesy," said Charles. "Or at least don't let on that you're going in."

"I _knew_ it," said Raven. "All these years—"

"That. Is not the point," said Charles. "Hank, what case histories?"

Hank cleared his throat unhappily. "Stories, really. People exchanging bodies. Foolishness, totally unverifiable, but it did give me an idea. You and Raven switched when you had an intense moment of mental connection at the moment when the compound was acting upon her shapeshifting abilities. I wonder if creating an equivalent connection might ultimately be necessary to sort of—disrupt the equilibrium that seems to have temporarily been created."

"What kind of connection?" Raven asked, and then recoiled from the thought in his mind. "Absolutely not, Hank."

"Just to create a, well, a sort of reflexivity. It could trigger an internal reassortment—"

" _What_ could?" demanded Charles.

Raven and Hank looked at each other. "Charles," said Raven. "Let me preface this by saying that Hank's idea is completely revolting but just so that you understand what he's getting at, remember in Oxford when I asked if you would date me? And you were really annoying about it?"

"You wanted Charles to date you?" Hank frowned. "I thought Charles was—"

"It was a rhetorical—you know what, never mind. Charles?"

"I don't remember being annoying," said Charles, and then, "Wait, why are you bringing this up again?" and then "Oh. _Oh_. You think that would work, Hank?"

Hank shrugged, avoiding Raven's eyes.

Charles was looking at Raven speculatively. "Well, I _am_ rather attractive, I suppose, so it's not entirely outside the realm of possibility. Of course, I'd have to discuss it with—"

" _No_ , Charles."

"Fine," said Charles, looking hurt. "If getting me my powers back really doesn't matter to you, then fine."

Raven rolled her eyes and turned back to Hank. "Do you have any suggestions that don't involve borderline incest?"

Hank was flipping through his notebook again. He didn't answer.

"Raven?" said Charles. "Really, you should consider this. I could be anyone you liked. I could—" He tensed, and was suddenly Amelia Earhart.

"Honestly, Charles. That was fifth grade, and I did not have a crush on her, I just wanted to go back in time and _rescue_ her."

Charles mouthed "Mrs. Amelia Darkholme" at her and Raven went to swat him, before realizing she was swatting Rita Moreno in _West Side Story_.

Hank was looking back and forth between them, mouth open. Raven winced. "Stop, Charles. Enough."

Charles shrugged, shimmered, and in Rita's place was a girl with dark hair and a tired face, iridescent wings coiling against black leather. For one second Raven found herself looking for Angel in his eyes, before she found Charles's mind instead.

"Not funny," she said, and suddenly what she missed most wasn't not being able to change her body, but not being able to choose her voice. Her voice could only be Charles's, and it sounded like it was coming apart. "Not funny at all."

"Raven…" Angel split at the seams and Charles's eyes were blue again.

"Don't talk to me."

She could still hear him calling to her after she'd slammed the door shut. Only out loud, not in her mind. She'd shut him out.

 

*

 

The gravel crunched under the white sneakers she was wearing. She hated the sneakers. She hated the gravel. She hated Charles. For asking her to do that. For knowing too much. For giving her secrets away.

Raven hiked herself up on the stone wall and watched mosquitoes circle. When she was blue, insects never bothered her. Now one landed on her arm. She slapped it and watched as a smear of red appeared on her skin.

So Charles knew about Angel. She'd been naïve to think she could keep it to herself. As if Charles really kept out of her mind except for birthdays and emergencies.

She remembered Angel calling him an idiot, but now when she tried to picture the moment, she couldn't. Instead, she saw Charles in the library, putting on Angel's face as casually as if she were a rabbit pulled from a hat. Irritated, she wiped the image away. She wanted to see Angel, not Charles's cleverness, and she certainly didn't want to be reminded of Charles's apparent willingness to— _he would have thought better of it_ , decided Raven, _he was joking_. _He couldn't have, not if he really knew how I felt_.

And suddenly it came over her in a wave, her longing to have Angel near, and she called out to her, although she made no sound.

_Angel. Angel. Angel._

A mosquito buzzed near her ear. Of course there was nothing.

_Angel._

And then she felt it, puzzlement, annoyance, like being—like she was the mosquito. Getting slapped.

_Charles?_

The voice wasn't coming from the house. It was more distant, almost infinitely distant, a wisp of a voice, the flutter of a wing.

Raven thought, _This is completely foolish and I will never admit to Charles that I actually began thinking I could reach someone so far away._

A flash of puzzlement again. An image of Charles, side by side with Erik, leaning back against red drapes, somewhere Raven didn't recognize. Then:

_Charles, I told Emma and I'm telling you too, get the fuck out of my mind._

Raven gasped and promptly fell off the stone wall. She sat there, back against the wall, considering banging her head against it. _Delusional_ , she thought, angry at herself.

Angel had been angry the morning before she left. Raven remembered her standing at the foot of the bed, managing to spit her words out and sound bored by them at the same time. And Raven had said all the wrong things without reaching out to touch. If she could touch Angel now—

Charles said it wasn't possible, not even with Cerebro. You could locate mutant brain waves a continent away; that didn't mean you could talk to them.

So it was a game, it was nothing, it couldn't happen. It wouldn't do any harm to try. Carefully, Raven thought about Angel's anger, how she guarded it jealously as if it were an intimate friend.

_Spying on me again, Charles?_

Raven was delusional, fine, but she knew that voice. It was distant, yes, but perfectly clear. A connection like a thin silver line in the space between them. Raven took a deep breath, and thought.

_It's not Charles, Angel. It's Raven._ She tried to project reassurance, affection, without adding an extra layer of _What the hell am I doing?_ and _How the fuck could you leave us like that?_ Then she waited, holding her breath, still not quite believing in the possibility of a reply.

_Bullshit. Raven's not a fucking telepath._

_It's—temporary? You remember Hank's experiment. It got mixed up, so me and Charles, we've switched powers. I read minds, he shapeshifts._

_Yeah, and I have a magic pink pony named Peaches. Not in the mood for one of your creepy come-ons, Charles. And leave Raven out of it._

Raven felt the silver line between them quiver, go out of focus.

_Please, Angel! I know how it sounds, but. Look, when you met me you thought I might fly. The first night at the base you called me a lightweight. Later you told me to shut up. Later you—later you kissed me._

There was a pause.

_You could be Charles and know all that from reading Raven's mind. You tell me something Charles wouldn't possibly say._

_Angel, I can beat him at chess._

Angel's mind seemed to gleam for a moment. Then: _I miss you, Raven._

Raven took a deep breath, tried to stay focused, tried to figure out what would be important to know. _Are you happier there, Angel?_

There was a pause. _I'm not around those stupid suits. I'm not a zoo animal. I don't have Charles tsking at me because I haven't signed on to his save-the-assholes campaign._

_And how does Shaw treat you?_

Angel showed her an image, just a flash, of Darwin's pleading face that night as he held out his hand, and then showed her how the memory made her feel. _I didn't know what he was going to do to Darwin, Raven. If I'd known—_

_But you saw what he did to the others._

_Humans. They would've let us be killed. They hate us._

_Charles says—he says we can rise above—_

_Are you fucking kidding me? Are you sure you aren't him?_

Raven let out an exasperated breath. _Okay, Angel, so it doesn't work, rising above doesn't work, does Shaw work for you? You're happy taking his orders?_

_I'm here now, I have to be practical. Emma's nice._

The words stopped, and Raven uncurled herself in Angel's mind, feeling her pride, her loneliness. Nudging, at least, at the loneliness. Angel's mind seemed to recoil, gather itself together. _So are you a telepath for good or what?_

_I don't know. Hank's working on it._

_And what's Charles doing while you're reading minds?_

_Turning blue_ , Raven told her, and waited for her to understand.

_Wait. He looks like you? You guys switched bodies too?_

_For now._

_What else have you switched? Is Hank following Charles around like a puppy now? Are you going to sleep with Erik?_

_Angel!_ But this Angel was familiar too: pushing, pushing, waiting for Raven to draw a line and then inviting her, irresistibly, past it.

_You've thought of it, don't tell me you haven't. Don't you want to know what it's like, now that you have his body? It's not a bad body—in its own idiot way._

_Know what what's like?_

_Being a man. Fucking someone like a man._

_Oh,_ thought Raven. _You know, Angel, having a man's body isn't actually new for me. I could always have done that._

Silence. Curiosity. A particular shade of interest.

_I thought you knew. I mean—would you have liked that better? With me?_

_No. Fuck no._ There was no uncertainty in Angel's voice. _I wanted_ you.

The silver line trembled, stretched, snapped, and Raven couldn't find the broken place.

 

*

 

She was sitting in her window seat, looking out at the darkness. She'd decided, after walking in on a conversation between Moira and Charles about whether their efforts to monitor Russian intelligence would be compromised by the replacement of an experienced telepath with "one less accustomed to coordinating telepathic powers with mission objectives," that telepathy made it irrelevant to leave one's room, so she'd been sitting there for hours.

There was a knock at the door, and a female voice said, "Raven? It's me."

Forehead to the glass, Raven could just make out the satellite dish, ghostly in the darkness. "You have to work on the voice, Charles," she said.

"I like your voice, if you don't mind me borrowing. Right now it's a strain being anyone but you."

"That's what I've been telling you," said Raven. "For years."

Charles said, "I know." And then, "Can I come in?"

"Okay," said Raven, but she didn't look around as he eased the door open.

"You're sitting in the dark. Why are you sitting in the dark? Never mind, I like it. May I?"

He sat down next to her in the window seat.

"Anyway, I'm sorry," he said. "I shouldn't have done that."

"You also said that to Hank, didn't you, after you told his boss what he was."

"I meant it then, too."

"It's not good enough," said Raven. "Can't you see, Charles, it's not good enough? You don't know how to leave people alone."

Charles didn't answer for a minute. Then, "Erik said that once. When he told me to stop reading him."

"We all tell you that eventually, Charles."

"Why? When I love someone, they lock the door. I just want to be _near_ —"

"It's reading _minds_ , Charles. It's not _cuddling_."

"Actually, that's quite—yes." His voice was brisk all of a sudden. "For me I suppose that sometimes that's exactly what it is. Rather embarrassing, I'm afraid."

The emotion inescapably radiating from him didn't match his impersonal tone at all. Raven let herself lean against his shoulder a moment, a shoulder smaller now than her own.

"So you were trying to cuddle me, and you found Angel instead."

"No. No, that's not it. I didn't know, Raven, I swear to you I didn't know until you looked at me like that when I shifted. It was just a joke, I was being a bit stupid, all right, extremely stupid, callous even, but I wasn't being deliberately cruel."

"All right," said Raven, feeling very tired. Charles always had so many words to say. "All right. And in the lab?"

"In the lab what?"

"When you made this whole mess to begin with. You said we'd talk about it later."

"Oh, right. Yes. You won't believe me—well, all right, you can look for yourself if you don't—but I wasn't actually meaning to go into your mind at all."

Raven waited.

"You know you'd been behaving oddly for days, ever since we left the research base."

"Left the research base? Everyone keeps talking about it like that, like we just decided we liked the weather better in Westchester."

"Right. Okay. Ever since our base was trashed and Darwin and a ton of other people were killed and Angel turned traitor, do you like that better?"

"Yes," said Raven. "I do, except for calling Angel a—yeah. So you were explaining how mysteriously, I wasn't very happy after that."

"It felt to me like more than that. Raven, I don't know, something was wrong, and you were angry at me, and I was going to find you and ask. Just—just _talk_ to you."

"Huh," said Raven. "I thought you were too busy with Erik to notice."

"Yes, well, to be perfectly honest, it was Erik who suggested it. He saw something—you and Hank—he was concerned—"

"He was turned on, actually. He said it was kinky."

There was a silence. "Raven, you have to understand that Erik is a very troubled person and has erected a lot of defenses to guard himself against more pain. But that's not to say he doesn't genuinely care about us."

Raven nodded as seriously and respectfully as she possibly could. Charles frowned at her out of the darkness. "Are you rolling my eyes right now? I'm not an eye-roller, Raven; I'm not sure I approve of the things you're doing with my face. "

"Let me get this straight," said Raven. "I can't roll my eyes with your face, but you can do whatever you want with my body. And so can Erik."

"Oh," said Charles. "Sorry about that. Erik is so, um. Anyway, I could stop. Did you want me to stop?"

"Spare me any more promises, okay? I just want you to tell me why you were in my mind yesterday."

"There's not much more to say. I wanted to talk to you, find out what you were planning, help you before you did anything rash. Then I opened the door and saw Hank with the needle and I didn't know what he was doing to you. I panicked, okay, I panicked and I went into your mind, but I was only trying to help. I never dreamed—this—" Charles held out his arm, traced the ridged pattern on his skin.

"You were jealous," said Raven flatly. "You hated seeing me listen to a scientist that wasn't you. Hank was going to do something for me that you've never been able to do."

Charles took a deep breath. "Maybe that too."

The room was dark around them.

"I think," said Raven thoughtfully, "I think I might have felt Angel's mind."

"You don't have to tell me about that."

"I'm not, idiot. I mean, just now."

"Not possible," said Charles, with great certainty.

_Neither is this_ , said Raven in his head. "Good night, Charles."

 

*

 

In Raven's dreams that night, she had her own body back, fringed with possibility and power. In her dreams, she remembered Angel.

The night Angel had first shown them all her wings and then, amused, risen into the air, Raven felt blue curling just under her skin, and then pushed it away, embarrassed. Of course Angel was beautiful. And who was Raven? Just one more person in a long list of people who found Angel beautiful. It didn't matter at all.

But later, after the dancing, after Charles scolded them as if they were children, Angel had said, "Come up to my room, I'm not sleepy, are you?" And Raven wasn't, not after all that happiness of being free.

Raven stretched out on the bed while Angel brushed her teeth to get the poison taste out and wished she could read minds so she'd know what Angel thought of her.

When Angel came out of the bathroom, she said, "You didn't show them."

"But I did," said Raven, sitting up, cross-legged. She'd shifted to Sean. Suddenly there had been two blotchy adolescent boys in the room, and in taking on his body she'd felt for just a moment the awkwardness of being Sean, wanting so much to please and stuck with a power so apparently useless.

"You showed them you could change," said Angel. "But you said this"—she waved a hand at Raven's body—"isn't really you."

"Not—exactly." Raven got up, made vague _I should really be going_ gestures.

"Can I see?"

Raven bit her lip. "Look, Angel. Your mutation is beautiful. Mine's not."

"Show me," said Angel, stepping closer. "I mean, as long as it's not tentacles. It's not tentacles, is it?"

"No, silly. But you might not—it's a little shocking—"

"Fucking show me," said Angel. Her hand on Raven's cheek was gentler than her voice. "I want to know who you are."

Raven stared back. She'd shift to herself now, okay, it was only fair, but then she didn't. Frozen. Not ready to be unwanted so soon.

Angel waited a minute longer and then shook her head. She turned around, her back to Raven, pulled her shirt over her head. Delicate lines rippled on her shoulder blades, then uncoiled just slightly into the quivering of wings.

Raven wanted to feel one of them trembling against her body. She wanted to run her hand down the arch of Angel's back.

"I'm not looking anymore," said Angel.

Raven put out her hand to the back of Angel's neck, the tip of her spine, and Angel reached behind her and grabbed her wrist, fingers on her pulse.

"No," she said. "With your real hand."

"How did you—"

"Raven. For me."

Raven sighed, and her hold on smooth fair skin loosened. She let it come, skin thickening, darkening into blue, becoming complex.

Angel didn't turn around. "You know I was showing _you_ tonight, " she said, almost conversationally. "Not them." She pulled Raven's hand in front of her and Raven stumbled closer, Angel's wing brushing her cheek.

Angel was looking at her hand, turning it in hers.

"Angel," said Raven.

"Blue is my favorite color," said Angel, and turned around at last.

 

*

 

But when Raven woke up past midnight in her own bed after uncomfortably vivid dreams, she was still in Charles Xavier's body. She stretched herself, yawning, touching the edges of multiple sleeping minds, not going in. Moira, Alex, Hank, Charles, Erik. They weren't enough.

She turned over on her side, curled up tight. _I don't want this body_ , she thought. _Someone take it away_. It was a long time before she went back to sleep.

 

*

 

Wearing a pair of pajama bottoms and nothing else, Raven was in the kitchen making toast, surrounded by shining, seldom-used countertops and arcane cooking paraphernalia no one had used in years.

"Raven." It was Erik.

"How do you know it's not Charles, managing to maintain his appearance for once?"

"Because Charles would never appear shirtless outside of the bedroom."

Raven dipped her head. "I bow to your superior knowledge of Charles in the bedroom."

The toast popped, a bit burnt, perfect.

Erik said suddenly, "You really don't mind it, do you?"

"Mind what?"

"Charles and me. You two were remarkably cozy, after all."

"Yeah, well." Raven brought her plate over to the center island, pulled up a barstool. "Mazel tov." She jerked her head toward the stove. "There's still some hot chocolate in the pot."

"A cup?"

Raven pointed, and Erik rummaged in a cupboard. "Perhaps you'll change back today," he said.

"I hope so," said Raven, but something wrenched in her chest. Angel—she wouldn't be able to reach Angel anymore.

"And then you'll give it up?" Erik poured hot chocolate into an Oxford University mug.

"Give what up?"

"This thing with Hank. Changing your looks. You'll give it up?"

"I don't know," said Raven, startled. She hadn't thought.

"You'd be lowering yourself." He sat down opposite her.

"Easy for you to say, look at you." Raven waved generally in the direction of his face. "Handsome. You blend right in."

"Blending doesn't help, Raven," said Erik. "They find you anyway."

Raven stopped chewing. She never knew what to say to Erik when he came out with things like that. He waved his hand, saved her from trying. "Not that Hank's magic potion would work regardless."

"How do you know? You're not a scientist."

"Look at what happened, Raven. You think you can get rid of your blue skin and still be able to shapeshift? You can't. It's a package deal. If you could rip one from the other I wouldn't be looking at Charles Xavier's face right now and there wouldn't be a man in my bed upstairs who looks exactly, just exactly, like Montgomery Clift."

"What—No, don't tell me, I don't want to know." Raven shoved the rest of her toast in her mouth, brought her plate to the sink. Why was there no mutation for instant cleansing of household objects? Charles should've found someone like that. She'd mention it to him, next time he was playing with Cerebro. Assuming there was a next time.

"You know I'm right."

"Maybe."

"You're perfect as you are, Raven. I know Charles hasn't exactly been as supportive as he could be, but there are going to be people who will see that."

"There already has been," said Raven, exasperated. There are only so many pep talks one can tolerate in the course of the day.

"Charles mentioned something about Angel…?"

"Of course he did. Charles Xavier, master of discretion, silent as the grave. Yeah, Angel wasn't into Hank's project either. She—we had a fight about it, actually."

"I confess, I'm surprised you went ahead with the experiment regardless."

Raven leaned back against the refrigerator. "In the first place, Erik, I didn't actually go ahead with it, it was a temporary, exploratory step in the process and I haven't decided whether to go further. And in the second place, more goes into my decision-making than whether I can get someone to fuck me when I look like a scarified poison lizard."

"I like lizards," Erik observed.

Raven threw up her hands. "Right, that's exactly the sort of thing I'm declaring irrelevant, but thanks for assuming I care."

Erik frowned into his cup. "Did Angel love you?"

Raven froze. "I don't know."

"Why did she go?"

"You know why, Erik. It's not like you never feel the same way."

"Telepaths," grumbled Erik. He looked up at Raven. "I wouldn't leave Charles."

"Good," said Raven. "That day Angel left? Neither would I."

"And now?" said Erik.

"I need to talk to Angel," said Raven.

"Charles mentioned that, too."

Raven shrugged. "He thinks it's impossible."

"I'm sorry," said Erik, and it was true. He wasn't being angry or defensive or leering or stoic, Raven could feel it. He had invited her in.

 

*

 

Raven climbed the stairs to Charles's room, not bothering to go back to put on a shirt. The one advantage of being stuck in a male body. You could be shirtless and it wouldn't be shameful. Just potentially sleazy.

Charles's bed was neatly made. Raven wondered how long it had been since he'd actually slept in it. She dropped onto the rug in front of the unlit fireplace. If Charles was being Montgomery Clift, she might not see him for a while.

Raven closed her eyes, started by clearing her mind of Westchester. Remembered grey carpets in corporate boxes, beds hastily moved in to house the CIA's special guests. Remembered how those awful rooms had felt, at times, like paradise. Her hands on Angel's waist, the flick of Angel's tongue on her neck. The first time her own body, her real body, had been touched like that. More gently than she could have imagined and then more insistently, Angel growing demanding, pushing her down, making her own patterns on Raven's skin.

And then once more, she thought of oceans and felt for the spidery silver line that led to Angel.

_Raven? It's still you?_

_It hasn't been fixed yet._

_Good._

_Really? You want me to look like Charles Xavier for the rest of my life?_

_I never said he wasn't cute. No, Raven, because I want to keep—being like this. Talking. You know there isn't anyone here for me._

_You said Emma…_

_I don't get her. There's some weird thing she has going on with Shaw. You know what, this sucks, Raven. In the club, I was a body, not a person. At your stupid government compound I was a mutant, not a person. Now I'm here and I'm supposed to get respect but actually I'm just a girl again. If I see Emma mix one more drink for Shaw…_

_I thought Shaw was going to let you live like a queen._ Raven couldn't keep the bitterness out.

_Yeah, it turned out he's just another asshole. I mean, I'm down with the whole mutant power thing, but he is seriously, seriously, an asshole. Wait, fuck, Emma is going to hear this._

_No, she's not._

_How do you know?_

_I think I'd feel it if—okay, I don't mean to sound creepy, Angel, but it's like I've got your mind wrapped inside mine and I think I'd feel it if another telepath was trying to get in._

_I knew this was gonna happen, Raven. I knew I was going to get inside you sooner or later._

Raven clenched her fists. _Angel…_

_Raven?_

_So we had a fight, Angel. One fight! People have fights. You didn't have to leave._

_I didn't leave because of you. Look, Raven, between us? it wasn't going to work. I wanted you, not what you had left over after catering to Charles Xavier._

Raven was quiet.

_How does that work, anyway, now that he's you? Do you make him listen while you talk? Look, just don't turn into an idiot. I know it's tempting when you're a rich asshole into mind control._

_Don't—Angel—_

_Whatever, Raven._

_I'm coming to get you, Angel._ This was something she didn't know until she heard herself say it, but now that it was out, she was pretty sure it was right.

_Bullshit. You don't even know where I am._

_I'll find you. I can, now._

_And if I don't want to be found? Maybe that lady pilot didn't either, Raven, did you ever think of that?_

_Oh God_ , said Raven. _Remind me never to bring up Amelia Earhart again to another living soul._

_I don't mind. It was cute._

_Thank you._

You're _cute. But I don't want to be part of Charles Xavier's good boy club._

_Neither do I._

Silence. Just a thin line swaying, very far away.

_What did you just say?_

_I'm leaving, Angel._ Raven listened to herself, excited, horrified.

_Well, don't come here, Raven, it's not any better. Same shit, different mutants._

_How is it the same? Not that I'd join Shaw in a million years, but he doesn't exactly run a good boy club._

_It doesn't matter. Shaw's a man with a vision, see, just like Charles. A guy who wants to change the world. I'm tired of signing up for someone else's vision, Raven._

_Erik's independent, too, and he's with Charles._

_Are you sure? He strikes me as a guy with his own goals._

_He loves Charles. That's one thing I know for sure._

_Love_ , said Angel, and emerging from her mind the word became something light and foolish. _Look, Emma told me about Erik. If I was him I'd want to kill the fuck out of Shaw too._

_And after that, what?_

_You're being Charles again._

_Sorry. Okay, Angel, what's_ your _vision, then?_

She got an image then, a flash in her mind. She saw herself, blue, and Angel hovering just before her, leading her into open air. Together. Raven concentrated, took the image, reshaped it. She was up on her toes, her mouth on Angel's, holding her, pulling her back to earth. _Got that, Angel?_

_When I see you, will you be Raven again?_

_When I see you, we might be at war._

_I won't fight you._

_Don't make promises._

It felt like they had settled something, but Raven had no idea what it was.

 

*

 

Raven dozed off, curled on the rug, woke to the sound of Charles's voice. He was in his enormous overstuffed armchair, reading Dickens out loud.

Raven yawned. "Sorry, I didn't get much sleep last night. How long have I been out? And why didn’t your voice keep me there?"

"Because I just got to the exciting bit. He's being taken to the guillotine and it's terribly noble."

"I don't like that one," said Raven. "Want to play chess?"

Charles glowered. "No."

"Very impressive, you still look like Charles," Raven observed. "Because by now I'd have thought you'd have turned into James Dean or maybe a koala bear. You've even got your own voice working for you."

"I'm getting better at sustaining it," Charles said.

"Good," said Raven. "It was no fun watching you be crap at my mutation, believe me."

Charles leaned back in the chair. "I do see it now, Raven. Having to keep yourself—

"—pretty—" she supplied.

"—most of the time can't be easy. It takes so much mental effort just to maintain this." He gestured at himself: neat, tweedy, professorial. "I mean, Erik keeps beating me at chess."

"Like that's hard," said Raven, and then Charles lunged at her from the chair, and she got him in the stomach with her elbow, and then he was blue again and they were on the floor together, laughing.

"I kind of miss your mind, Raven," said Charles.

"Oh, Charles," said Raven. "Come here. How often did you go into people's minds, really?"

Charles rested his head on her stomach and stared at the ceiling. "Not as much as you think, Raven. Really. It gets tiresome. To begin with, most people are thinking the same things. They're worried and they want things. I can't be waking up every morning and dealing with all those feelings. If I did, I couldn't—um."

"Couldn't what?"

"Couldn't think well of people. We're smaller in our minds sometimes, Raven. We're more selfish and silly. If you listen too closely, you start believing the stuff people think about is more important than how they actually behave. I mean, I don't actually want to know how often in the course of a day I make you want to smack me, Raven—"

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

"So I filter it. I like to feel minds around me without going all the way in. I'm good at looking for targeted bits of information, or if someone's broadcasting their distress especially powerfully, embarrassment, pain, sometimes I can't avoid it, but I don't go looking for it anymore."

"Unless you want to get laid, of course." She pushed him off, sat up.

"Well, I happen to think that figuring out what drink someone wants is not actually an intrusion of privacy, it's a way to make someone happy. It's like a birthday exception and it's groovy. Why are you looking at me like that?"

Raven thought about it. "Because you're dangerous, Charles. You're so dangerous."

"Because I want to make people happy? Because I want to do good?"

"Yes, Charles. Your goodness and happiness could tear the world apart."

There was a pause, and Charles pulled himself back up to his armchair. "You sound like Erik."

"Really? I'd think he'd be delighted to let you make him happy."

"He—if I could make him happy I'd—that's not the point, Raven." His skin blossomed into blue. "Erik thinks I'm dangerous. To—to us. Mutants."

"He told you this?"

"No," said Charles. "He didn't. And now—it's one thing I kind of like about not reading minds. I don't have to see it in him anymore. I don't have to feel him not trusting me."

Raven sat down on the arm of his chair, crowding him until he didn't look so desolate. "You need to talk to him, Charles. Please. Before Shaw, before you save the world, you need to talk to him."

"I talk to him all the time."

"You know what I mean, Charles. Today. You have to."

He pressed his forehead against hers. "I promise. You care so much. Why do you care so much?"

"Because I won't be here to help you."

"What? Of course you will. Raven—"

"I'll be leaving soon, Charles.

"What? Why? Raven, we need you, especially if—" His voice wobbled. "Especially if we don't change back. Shaw is unimaginably powerful, we're on the brink of nuclear catastrophe—"

"Right, and I'm going to help you save the world, Charles, I will, but I'm not coming back here after."

Charles pulled her into his lap and she felt the roughness of her own skin. "So where are you going?"

She sighed. "That depends on Angel."

"Angel again. I know you think you've been talking to her, Raven, but—"

"She's not crazy, Charles." Erik was standing in the doorway.

"Not crazy, I didn't say that, a little unbalanced by recent events perhaps."

Erik shook his head and came closer, looking down at them. Raven realized how odd they must seem to him, Raven in Charles's lap, to all appearances a perfectly ordinary thirtyish man in the arms of a strange blue creature.

Erik said, "Charles. Consider for a moment a girl who can transform herself into anyone. Think how closely she must look at others to be able to become them. How closely she must hear, in order to speak as they do. For her own safety she learns to read them: what they do, what they say, what they feel. Think of the level of empathy required, and then give this girl telepathy, and tell me how strong she is likely to be."

"Not—stronger than me?" Charles was looking from Erik to Raven, stricken. "No one can read minds that far away. Telepathy, I'm sorry, is not a telephone call." Charles shook his head. "Stronger than me?"

Raven could almost hear what Angel would have to say to that. She shut her eyes, thought of water, waves of blue, one ship in an endless ocean. An intense moment of connection, Hank had said. She was strong. She thought, perhaps, she could do it on purpose.

_Angel. I won't reach you like this again. I'm going to give it back to Charles._

_Raven?_ Angel sounded dreamy, a little confused.

_I won't need it. It's okay. This isn't really good-bye._

Charles's hands closed tightly on her upper arms. "Raven? Raven, what are you—"

Erik said, "Let her concentrate, Charles. Leave her alone."

But Charles's voice, coming to her as from a great distance, was panicky, bereft, tangling the silver thread that connected her to Angel. "Raven, stay with me—Raven, please, I don't know where you are."

She let go of the thread and found Charles's hands instead. "I'm with you, Charles. Let me in." She turned to face him, eyes closed still, navigating by touch. High tide. Pressed his fingers to his own forehead and thought to him. Gave him the ocean. Gave him the tides. Tried not to drown. Pushed the distance of it, all of it, into his mind, and with her own mind traced the outline of the body he'd borrowed, let the blue rush back into the space that she'd made when the ocean ran out.

In the sudden stillness, the silence, she felt her own fingertips. Her hands. Her throat. Her power.

She opened her eyes and saw Charles, his fingers to his forehead, looking at Erik with startled joy. "You're there again, Erik. With me. I can feel it."

Raven didn't have to look down at herself to know what she was. What she had gained. What she had lost. She could feel it in her own scaled skin.

She slid to the floor, and Charles let her go. "But you'll stay now?" he asked. "Now that it's over?"

"No," said Raven.

Erik nodded, as if he understood.

 

*

 

Hank was taking notes at a mad pace. "So at 12:30 this afternoon, you experienced spontaneous physical exchange accompanied by ability transference."

"I wouldn't call it spontaneous, exactly," said Raven. She'd taken the wretched sweatpants off at last, which seemed to be of particular interest to Alex and Sean. They were whispering to each other, looking vaguely scandalized. Moira was listening politely, apparently unbothered by Raven's state of undress.

"It was a moment of intense mental connection, just as you suggested, Hank," said Charles.

"Well, not _just_ as," Erik put in, looking wistful.

"Anyway," said Raven, "I showed him my mind and gave him his powers back and then took my own, thank you very much."

"Hmm," said Hank dubiously. "Probably a coincidence of timing, given that the effects were already unexpectedly prolonged."

"Possibly," said Charles. "Or possibly we shouldn't underestimate Raven."

There was a pause. "Right," said Hank. "Well, I can see I have more research to do on that particular—"

"Don't," said Raven.

"Don't what?"

"The cure. I don't want it anymore."

"Good," said Erik, talking over Hank, "and now that that's settled there's a fellow named Shaw."

"And Russians," Charles put in.

"We need to focus on Shaw, not the Russians," said Erik. "Let's not get sidetracked."

"Erik, preserving America from nuclear attack is not getting sidetracked," said Charles.

"And what will America do for you once you have preserved it?" Erik asked.

Moira cleared her throat and shuffled some papers. "We're looking into that—perhaps a special classification—an elite strike force—"

"I only want to tell you this once, Moira," said Erik. "I am not an American soldier. I will never be an American soldier."

" _Talk to him_ ," Raven mouthed to Charles. " _He's right_." Charles nodded, and then Raven heard him in her mind. _I promised, didn't I?_

Raven shook her head and began writing a letter on the pad of paper on her lap, the buzz of argument circling around her.

_Dear Angel, I won't be able to give you this letter for a while, not until it's no longer necessary. But now that we can't think our conversations, when I miss you this much writing a useless letter seems like the next best thing. I'm staying with Charles and Erik just long enough to stop the serial killer you work for, and then you and me are going to rescue each other. I have decided that by the time you read this, we will both be on a beach enjoying a very long holiday…_

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on LiveJournal for the Bodyswapped fic fest, September 2011.


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